Clergyman 'drowned and cut up by youth'

By David Sapsted

12:01AM BST 13 Jun 2002

An 81-year-old clergyman was drowned in his own bath and his body dismembered by a teenager he had taken into his home, a jury was told yesterday.

Christopher Hunnisett, then 17, first attempted to dispose of the Rev Ronald Glazebrook's body at sea. When that failed, he and a friend chopped it up at a Sussex beauty spot and buried the torso alongside a busy road and the head and limbs in a bag in a Hastings park.

On the first day of his trial at Lewes Crown Court, Hunnisett, now 18, denied murder but admitted a charge of unlawfully burying a body.

Philip Katz, QC, prosecuting, said Hunnisett had killed Mr Glazebrook because he planned to evict him from his elegant ground-floor flat in St Leonards after being bullied by the youth.

Mr Glazebrook, who still conducted services in St Leonards, had taken in Hunnisett some months before the murder in April last year as an act of charity because the boy was having problems at home. At first, Hunnisett paid nothing but, after getting a job, he became a paying lodger.

"I want to make it quite plain that there were no sexual overtones to this relationship. It was simply an act of misguided charity towards this defendant," Mr Katz told the jury of six men and six women.

The pair shared a love of boating, he said, and at first Hunnisett made himself useful about the house. But as the months passed the relationship altered as the youth began to bully Mr Glazebrook.

"There is evidence that the relationship between the two had deteriorated to such a state that the reverend wanted him out of the flat," said Mr Katz. "No doubt Hunnisett had grown to like the life he was living, with access to Mr Glazebrook's fairly elegant home, his boat and his car."

Facing the prospect of losing this comfortable lifestyle, Hunnisett had decided to kill the clergyman, said Mr Katz. "For his pains, for his charity, Mr Glazebrook was abused in his own home and drowned in his own bath."